When Laurie Styvers died in 1998, aged 48, obituaries apparently completely did not recall her bohemian musical incarnation virtually three a long time earlier. No surprise, actually. Latest years had been spent operating an animal sanctuary in Texas, the place she’d been born Laurette Stivers; her two albums, 1971’s Spilt Milk and 1973’s The Colorado Child, had been already lengthy forgotten. Her one brush with success, her debut’s breezy, evergreen opener, “Beat The Reaper”, had additionally missed the charts even after British radio play, and regardless of Alan Freeman’s help, a follow-up 7”, The Colorado Child’s playful, banjo-embellished “All American Lengthy Haired Denimed Music-Writing Guitar Man”, joined her catalogue in obscurity.
That’s how issues might need remained had music historian Alec Palao and New York’s Excessive Moon Data not launched Gemini Woman: The Full Hush Recordings in 2023. Earlier than their intervention, most investigating her work would have discovered little greater than critic Robert Christgau’s mean-spirited overview of Spilt Milk in Rock Albums Of The 70s. Deeming her an “LA airhead” – although she’d spent her late teenagers in London, not Laurel Canyon – he crucified her as “so trite and pretty-poo in her fashionably troubled adolescence that you simply hope she chokes on her personal cash”. That’s regardless of the report being licensed by Mo Austin simply earlier than he turned Warner Brothers’ chairman, and her contributions to psych-folk act Justine’s sole eponymous 1970 album, which at present instructions foolish cash.
Maybe Christgau was offended by Styvers’ standing as an oil engineer’s daughter whose household had relocated to England, the place she was educated on the capital’s non-public American Faculty. Actually, he’d have relished how The Colorado Child lacked a US launch. Nonetheless, that 2CD set has ensured that these raised on, say, both Laura Nyro and Dory Previn or Weyes Blood and Angel Olsen would do effectively so as to add Styvers to their assortment. Let Me Consolation You now extends that invitation to vinyl by compiling the set’s beforehand unreleased materials.
Admittedly, her most constant charms lie in her studio albums, produced by Shel Talmy protégé Hugh Murphy, who’d collectively arrange Styvers’ residence, Hush Recordings. Spilt Milk’s “All I Ever Had”, with double-tracked vocals, may very well be The Carpenters, and “Pigeons” – all hammered pianos and oompah brass – a “Once I’m 64”-fixated Harry Nilsson; The Colorado Child’s title captures her fondness for the state the place her dad and mom stored a cabin as a lot as its wide-eyed “Oh Colorado” distills her frequent pastoral leanings and kinship with Carole King. Her heart-on-sleeve items, in the meantime, are finest encapsulated within the understated, unaffected innuendo of the latter’s “You Be The Tide, I’ll Be The Bay”, its candid want for a “salty outdated man” – nonetheless 22, she and Murphy, 5 years older, had been now lovers – matched by the quilt shot’s babyfaced Drew Barrymore innocence.
Nonetheless, Let Me Comfor You’s 11 tracks showcase such qualities impressively, her easy sweetness evident in a scaled-back, piano-and-strings model of the extravagant Spilt Milk observe that gave 2023’s compilation its title. It’s there, too, in “God Is aware of The Motive”’s sparse craving and an “All I Ever Had” demo, one of many uncommon occasions she, not arranger Tom Parker – recent from Mac and Katie Kissoon’s lesser recognized “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” – performs piano.
She’s comfortable amid larger preparations, too, with the wise-beyond-her-years “The Means I Ought to Keep” lifted by brass. The title observe, too, balances disheartened loneliness with affectionate embraces, its Karen Carpenter purity – “I want I used to be another person’s idiot” – mirrored, regardless of an oddly cutesy vocal, in an early recording of The Colorado Child’s “White Flowers”.
1972’s glossier “If You Don’t Write Me Quickly”, brightened by chiming glockenspiels and a swaggering instrumental break, is equally imbued with wide-eyed nostalgia, and “Loopy Wet Spring”, fuelled by Henry Spinetti’s drums, even flirts with funk, although that’s nothing subsequent to “Loopy Wet Spring”’s split-stereo, fuzz-guitar thrives.
Suitably, Let Me Consolation You concludes with the warm-hearted, gratifying “Now That The Rain Has Stopped”, its pragmatic romance – “We each got here out OK, I believe” – indicative of Styver’s levelheaded but affecting craft. Naturally, she’s worthy of upper reward than both her personal or Christgau’s, however, 1 / 4 century after her demise, she now has one other probability to beat the reaper ultimately.
